The rune's resin casing scratched a jagged line down my throat as I swallowed.
"No!" Colter squeezed my lower jaw in a vice grip, thumb and middle finger digging into my
cheeks to force open my mouth.
The little piece lodged somewhere near my Adam's apple for one awful second, but I fought the
urge to gag, gulping instead as I glared up at Colter. His pupils were dime-sized, his lips parted
in open dismay that brought a vicious smile to my face as the obstruction slid free, into my
esophagus.
Colter released me with a feral sound of frustration, then cracked his open palm across my face,
shooting stars through my vision. His fist caught in my hair, yanking me back upright on my
knees before I could fall sideways. My ear was ringing, but in the muffled half-silence it created,
I could hear that weird, low-frequency static like a white noise machine cranked uncomfortably
high.
"Damn it!" He pounded between my shoulder blades with bruising force. "Torrin, you damned
fool. Cough it up!"
Just when I thought he might collapse my lung, he tossed me aside by my hair, and I hit the
ground with an arm bent beneath me and my cheek in the dirt—a cruel mirror of Seth. My left
eye felt too big for its socket, but even with my hazed vision, my brother's pale face leaped out
at me. Colter's armored legs paced before me, but I kept my gaze on Seth, willing him to move.
Please.
"It's fine. It's fine," Colter repeated, levelling his tone between harsh breaths. "It'll still work. It's
my word against no one's." His feet paused inches from me. "Or… mine against his?"
Another pair of legs came into view, and I vaguely registered Rhea's voice. "Colter—"
"Give me a minute."
"Colter," she pressed. "We've secured the auxiliaries. But what are we doing here?"
I tore my eyes from Seth and rolled onto my side. Rhea's words might have given me hope
she'd stop this madness, if not for her urgent tone and my brother's blood on her axes.
"What's the new play?" she asked, intense eyes locked on Colter's face.
He stopped pacing, but his knuckles massaged under his chin in a nervous tic. "I need to think.
In the meantime, get rid of the witnesses."
Rhea drew her axes and looked down at me.
"Not him," said Colter. His face hardened as his eyes dipped to mine. "Not yet."
She nodded, then faced the rift behind me. "No witnesses," she barked.
Screams rang out, chilling my blood. Dread pooling in my gut, I twisted to track Rhea as she
stalked past me.
In the eerie crimson light cast by the inner rift, a cluster of bodies in medic white and bulky
boneforger overalls jostled each other like a herd of startled sheep, backing away from the
brandished blades that were closing in on them. A woman broke free, but Fintan skewered her
before she got ten paces. Rhea's axes cut down a pair who fled hand in hand, trying to make a
break for the shelter of the gnarled trees. The head boneforger, standing crooked on his splinted
ankle, swung a hammer at Gavin, but the ardent severed the oncoming arm and the weapon
with it.
A young medic knelt and tried to hug Leon's knees, crying, "No, no, please, I'll say whatever you
guys need! Don't—" Leon's backhand smacked the man aside, and a swing of his hammer
silenced him for good.
Behind Leon, Priscilla crouched over a body, blood spatter painting her face as she yanked her
knife free of the man's rib cage. Before she even straightened, her head snapped toward
another crawling, bleeding boneforger like a feline spotting an injured mouse, and her dagger
drove down through his brain stem.
Sick to my core, I turned away from the brutality and found my brother's face again.
Colter had resumed his pacing, his path wider this time, travelling from me to Seth and back
again. He was muttering under his breath, but I didn't try to decipher it. I just wanted to get to
Seth.
I didn't want to die alone.
"Get over here, all of you. I think I got it," Colter said, boots scuffing to a stop way closer to Seth
than he had any right to be.
I heard them all coming, but I didn't care. It seemed they didn't either; no one stopped me when
I pushed up to hands and knees. They just passed me by. We all knew I wasn't going to get far
if I ran.
A pang went through my stomach, the muscles seizing from the sharp pain. I looped an arm
around my gut, wincing. I imagined the rune tearing up my intestines. They weren't supposed to
be swallowed. The resin was bad enough, but who knew what horrific side effects the bloodrune might cause if it dissolved in my stomach. What could happen if a Red got a high dose of raden
to the bloodstream?
Whether it was by Colter's hand or the rune's doing, I wasn't getting out of this. Seth's command
to survive still rang in my head, but all I wanted was to lie down beside him and go to sleep.
The pain dissipated, and I tentatively put one hand in front of the other, afraid to try and stand.
When my stomach didn't protest, I started to crawl toward Seth, only half listening to Colter.
"We can mostly stick to the old story," he was explaining. "But we say the Red here tried to
make something of himself. He stole the parasite rune while we were all fighting the reanimated
drake beast. When I caught him and tried to talk him down, I could see the greed in his eyes. He
wanted to be an ardent so bad." Colter sighed in feigned pity. "He swallowed it."
"And we say that's different from you absorbing the drake rune because…?" asked Gavin.
Surprised by the pushback, I looked up to find Colter in Gavin's face, a finger rammed into the
divot of his collarbone.
"Because I had to," he snarled. "We're all alive because I did. He's a greedy little Red who hid
and then tried to steal from the Conglomerate. It's my word against his. You got a problem with
that story?"
Gavin backpedaled, throwing up his hands. "No. I'm just making sure we're clear." He flashed
his ultra-white teeth. "Making sure Fintan's getting it"—he punched his brother's arm—"and
paying attention."
Fintan was looking around the forest, fingers clenching and unclenching at his side. "What's that
sound? I hate it," he said. "It won't go away."
Colter snapped his fingers in front of Fintan's nose. "Listen up. I'm getting us all out of this clean,
alright, but you have to pay attention."
"That sound's not right," insisted Fintan, one eye scrunched into a wince.
The white-noise crackle was really starting to hurt my head, too. It made the world even fuzzier,
made me feel like I had something crawling over my skin. I rolled my neck, trying to shake off
the feeling, as I continued my path to Seth. Just a little further now. I was beyond Colter's group.
Almost to him. If they were really taking me with them out of here, I couldn't let them leave him
lying here alone. He didn't deserve that.
He deserved to go home.
Colter was going to try and have me thrown in jail—would succeed, most likely—but I had to
make sure Seth got back to Hanna. If I could do that, I didn't really care what happened to me.
Not right now anyway. A numbness had trickled through my body like ice water. I didn't feel
much of anything.
That is, until another debilitating pain ripped through my stomach, and I dropped to my forearms
to breathe through it.
"Fintan has a point," I heard Priscilla saying. "Whatever the plan, let's make it quick."
Heavy footfalls drew near, and a big fist knotted in my jacket collar, yanking me up and turning
me toward Colter. My arm was twisted behind me, dulling the pain in my stomach with fresh
agony, and a dagger danced in front of my face.
"The quickest way," Leon growled in my ear as he dipped the blade toward my stomach, "would
be to cut the rune out of him and be done with it."
A bolt of panic fired through my head, and I tried to rip myself free but just ended up drawing
hissing, pained breaths through my teeth when Leon increased the pressure on my shoulder
joint.
"That way, nobody contradicts the story," Leon went on.
"No," said Colter. "We might damage the rune. It's our proof of the parasite. Best thing to do is
get him to the medical bay, have them cut it out."
"We don't need him alive to use his body as evidence," said Priscilla.
"True…" Colter scanned me, contemplating.
I glowered back at him, the gears in my head turning slowly at first, then hitting their groove as
the moment stretched. I ran through my training. Eventually, something will take you by surprise,
or be too fast, or catch you wrong-footed, Seth's voice echoed. It isn't just your ability to react
that will keep you alive, but to act.
But how?
Analyze, interpret, take action.
I looked at Leon's hovering hand, the blade aimed to slash open my gut, arm corded with
muscle. But no raden! He hadn't bothered. I was just a Red. He didn't know anyone had taken
the time to train me to hit hard with what I had.
Assess his stance, Seth's memory demanded.
I looked down. Leon's feet were braced to either side of me… but he favored his right side, put
more weight on it. His left knee didn't fully extend, remaining fractionally bent. An old injury. It
trembled… No, it rippled with a crimson light, like a shadow cast by water.
Huh?
I looked around. Everything was red.
"No," Colter decided at last. "If we keep him alive, the media will make him a sideshow. A crazy
Red who stole and swallowed the rune of a deadly parasite? They'll be so focused on that story,
the rest will be white noise."
The red glow stretched all the way to Seth's body on my right. I met his vacant eyes, and for a
second, they seemed to come back to life, drilling his final word into my head. Survive.
"God, that sound! I can't take it!" Fintan suddenly roared. "It's making everything shaky."
"Get him under control," Colter snapped at Gavin.
"Guys," cried Priscilla, "the rift!"
Leon twisted left to see, putting more weight on that leg, and I kicked him as hard as I could in
the bum kneecap. He went down with a bellowing cry, and I wriggled free of his loosened hold.
I rushed to Seth's body, no real plan other than to keep him with me. I crouched and got my
arms under him, rolling him onto his back so I could get him in a proper fireman's carry. His
limbs flopped and his head lolled, eyes never finding me.
A knot in my throat, I drew up his knees, threaded my arm through, and then hoisted him across
my shoulders with a groan. Hamstrings already heating, I turned to the rift, and for a second, I
thought my tears were making mirages. The rift was expanding in stops and starts, the edges
serrated like a shark's teeth that seemed to devour its surroundings in uneven bites. The trees
beneath the rift buckled and folded into nothing. The ground around them rolled up like a carpet.
Colter and his team were sprinting toward the widening red maw, shouting at each other over
the staticky crackle that had grown into an ear-piercing whine. I took a few shaky steps forward,
but then the edges of the rift began to sputter, popping like spitting embers.
Beneath the rift, the pile of bodies… moved. A shape stirred in its center. I squinted at it, making
out a figure with chin-length hair pushed back from his forehead. Taj?
He stumbled and half-crawled clear of the dead. A weak glimmer of raden wavered around his
legs like he was preparing to jump, but he swayed on his feet. His head twisted between the oncoming ardents who'd thought they'd killed him and the rift far above his head, its swirling
center turning from red to pink to white.
The space beyond the rift was a black void. Around it, the environment crumpled like paper, but
below, the bodies of the auxiliaries were swallowed by the growing mouth. Lightning bolts of
raden fired out from the now-white center, striking at Taj, who flared his raden and took off at a
pitiful, hobbling run across the quickly vanishing dirt floor to no avail. He vanished, screaming,
into the blinding tear in reality.
Seeing Taj swallowed by the light, Colter and his crew turned tail, rushing back toward me,
raden glowing much stronger around them.
I wrapped my arms around Seth's shoulders and pulled him into an embrace, at a loss for what
else to do but hold him. The rift was coming to me, consuming the world. Soon it would take us
too. At least we'll go out together.
The white center pulsed, sending out a shockwave like an explosion, forked bolts of raden
slamming down on anything solid left standing, shearing through the farthest trees that hadn't
yet dissolved. A scorching flash like an imploding star burst from the rift and washed over
everything. It chased the ardents down, turning them into dark silhouettes.
I watched the light come, let it wash over me. The pain I expected didn't arrive with it, though,
just the usual pop of my eardrums as an unseen pressure pushed me from all sides. But instead
of the shrill ring of passing through a rift, there was a whooshing gale. I felt myself leave the
ground, a tornado wind tossing me around as I plummeted through the emptiness. I clutched
Seth tighter, anchoring my fingers under the segments of his armor.
I expected to hit some sort of bottom any second, but instead, shadows swirled around me,
taking shapes. Ardents, judging by the weapons in their hands, but I couldn't say who. They
weren't tumbling or flailing around like me. Just standing there. One man looked distinctly bald,
his head a boulder on massive shoulders, a monstrous sword spanning across his back like
crooked wings. Clinging to his shoulder was a fuzzy thing with little antlers between round,
bearish ears and a fluffy nub of a tail. Beside him stood a woman, strong and tall like Rhea, but
her hair flowed down her back in a braid, unaffected by the slipstream around us, and she bore
an elegant sword. Less distinct figures hazed behind the pair, all of them just dark mirages. I
passed so close to the woman that I reached out, trying to grab onto the one solid thing in this
white maelstrom, but she was suddenly yanked backward. Her form slammed into the bald man,
and they both shrank to pinpricks before disappearing entirely.
Abrupt as a camera flash, the white light cut off, and my body met hard floor with a mild "oof."
Seth's weight lay heavy on my legs. A dampness seeped into the back of my pants, and I
looked down to see a slick marble floor run through with deep cracks. A thick coating of mildew
and moss held onto moisture, filling the space with a dusky scent. Muck, blood, and bits of viscera lay scattered in every direction, attracting flies. It didn't help the queasiness brought on
by another intestine-twisting pain from my abdomen. I felt feverish, sweat cold on my neck and
between my shoulder blades.